In the textile manufacturing industry, one costly component of manufacturing garments is the manual labor required to assemble the garments. Reductions in the amount of manual labor required at any step of the garment assembly process can result in substantial reductions in production costs. One labor intensive step in the assembly of garments having a waistline or neckline drawstring is the threading of the drawstring through the drawstring sleeve.
Despite being a time consuming and labor intensive component of assembling a finished garment, drawstring threading apparatuses known in the prior art are inefficient and expensive. The prior art methods and apparatuses for positioning a drawstring require either an excessive amount of manual labor or expensive machinery.
For example, one prior art manual method involves using a flexible threading wire such as the threading wire (Model 3901) sold by Atlanta Attachment Company located at 410 Industrial Park Drive, Lawrenceville, Ga. 30245. The prior art threading wire has a fastener attached to one end for attaching a drawstring. To thread a drawstring with the prior art threading wire, an operator places a garment on a garment mounting assembly that expands. After positioning the garment, the operator must then pick-up the drawstring threading wire. The operator must take the time to carefully and accurately align the drawstring fastener with the opening of the drawstring sleeve while holding the threading wire. The threading wire is then inserted through the garment sleeve such that the drawstring fastener extends from the garment sleeve. A pre-cut drawstring is then attached to the drawstring fastener and the drawstring is pulled back through the garment sleeve resulting in the drawstring being threaded through the garment. The drawstring threader must then be laid down and the garment can then be removed from the garment mounting assembly. The operator must repeatedly pick-up and lay down the drawstring threading wire while placing and removing the garment on the garment mounting assembly. The problem with this manual method is the extensive amount of time taken to manually thread the drawstring.
Other manual threading methods and apparatus are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,079, issued to Holmgren on Sep. 5, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,437, issued to Sauger, on Jun. 9, 1987; U.S. Pat. No. 3,688,379, issued to Davis et al., on Sep. 5, 1992.
Various complicated threading machines have also been designed such as the machines disclosed in the following patents: U.S. Pat. No. 2,993,455, issued to Baize on Jul. 25, 1961; U.S. Pat. No. 2,511,247, issued to E. E. Champlin on Jun. 13, 1950; U.S. Pat. No. 3,051,102, issued to A. S. Minchenber, on Aug. 28, 1962; U.S. Pat. No. 3,406,610, issued to B. C. Golden, on Oct. 22, 1968.
Despite the many machines and manual apparatuses designed to thread, the prior art does not disclose an efficient and inexpensive garment drawstring threading system. A drawstring threading apparatus is needed to reduce the amount of manual labor required to position a drawstring in a drawstring sleeve and which also does not entail the use of expensive machinery.